Montreal police were in force and the demonstration was declared illegal around 4 in the afternoon.
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About 100 people braved the freezing cold in Westmount on Saturday to express their support for the Wet’suwet’en Nation of British Columbia and to express their opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
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The women of Wet’suwet’en, Marlene Hale and Eve Saint, spoke to the crowd for nearly an hour, underscoring their people’s determination to defend their land. They also criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the RCMP.
“We will do this,” Hale said, drawing cheers.
The demonstration is one of several in Canada that have followed an RCMP raid on the Gidimt’en checkpoint in Wet’suwet’en territory earlier this month. RCMP officers arrested land defenders who have been block access to workplaces of the 670-kilometer pipeline, part of which would run through the undisclosed territory of Wet’suwet’en. The pipeline is being built to transport natural gas from northeastern British Columbia to Kitimat.
“A protest like this is needed,” Al Harrington, a native of Shoal Lake, Ontario, who now resides in Kanesatake, told the Montreal Gazette before the start of the protest. “There are Canadian laws that are being violated by the Canadian government and the RCMP. They are not respecting our rights and this needs to be resolved as soon as possible. We came here to show solidarity and let you know that this will not be tolerated.
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Montreal police were present for the demonstration, which began a few meters from the RCMP headquarters in Quebec. Access to the building was blocked by several policemen and cruise ships and vans from the Sûreté du Québec. There were dozens of riot police on hand, as were many bike squad officers.
“Return to land”, “No consent, no access”, “No pipelines on stolen native lands”, “Crimes of colonization cannot be buried” and “Wet’suwet’en Strong” laughed some of the signs held high by protesters. Mohawk, Palestinian and Soviet flags could be seen waving in the wind.
“Whose street is this? It’s ours! “The protesters chanted in French as the march began in the middle of the afternoon. At approximately 4 pm, when the crowd reached the corner of Atwater Ave. and Ste-Catherine St., the police declared the demonstration illegal.
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Organized by an anti-capitalist collective called the Convergence des lutes anticapitalistes, the event also attracted participants from organizations such as Independent Jewish Voices and the pro-Marxist group Fightback.
“What we’re trying to do is build bridges between the labor movement in Canada and the indigenous struggle,” said Connor Bennett, a Concordia University student who is part of Fightback. “Inherently, both are struggles against these big corporations and both are struggles against capitalism. So we are trying to make a united struggle of workers, indigenous peoples and all oppressed people in Canada against what we believe to be the source, which is capitalism. “
Other protests may follow as anger against the RCMP is growing across Canada, said Aaron Lakoff, who held a banner reading “Justice, paix et solidarité” along with colleagues from the Independent Jewish Voices group.
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“Look what happened in February 2020, after the last RCMP raid,” Lakoff said. “There was a movement of people across the country working to close Canada, and that put pressure on the government to take into account the violence they were perpetrating. More and more people question Canada’s relationship with First Nations people. They want to have better relations based on friendship between nations. “
That enhanced dialogue begins with education, said Harrington, who walked from Kanesatake to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, this summer to raise awareness for the 215 indigenous children whose remains were found in a former residential school in British Columbia.
“When we were meeting people, a lot of them didn’t know the story,” he said. “They heard about it on the news, but they didn’t go any further. So what is needed is more education in the school system and the truth. The truth is number 1. “
Reference-montrealgazette.com